Boris Kagarlitsky on the new-style New Left Review
Michael Gavin
Marxist, Boris Kagarlitsky, in his Marxism List. I think it deserves a
wider audience.
- text -
Date: Wed, 03 May 2000 14:05:17 -0400
From: Louis Proyect <ln...@panix.com>
Subject: The Suicide of New Left Review (posted by Doug Henwood to
LBO-Talk)
The Suicide of New Left Review
by Boris Kagarlitsky
For forty years, New Left Review was a symbol for the radical
intelligentsia throughout the world. The articles carried in it were
more successful or less so, and the points of view presented in it were
astonishing for their superficial radicalism or for their toothless
moderation. Nevertheless, for all leftists who read English, the journal
remained a source of information on contemporary Marxism. New names
appeared on its pages, and discussions of fundamental importance
revolved around views expressed there. Although NLR was published in
Britain, and most of its authors were based there or in the US, it was
not only open to writers from other countries, but in its essence,
approach, structure and ideology, constitued an international
publication. Now, this journal is no more. There is another journal
which bears the same name, but this latter periodical is fundamentally
different, based on a diametrically opposite concept.
>From January 2000, New Left Review changed its editor, design and
numbering. Before us we have number one, a little exercise-book formated
in post-modernist style. The sub-head "Second Series" seems to presume
that the journal will survive for another forty years, and that there
will perhaps be a third and fourth series. The change of concept is
declared in a foreword by Perry Anderson, under the expressive heading
"Renewals". Perry Anderson, who succeeds Robin Blackburn as editor, is
not someone new to NLR. He was present at the very birth of the journal.
The makeup of the editorial board is also practically unchanged. We are
not talking about an infusion of fresh blood; quite the reverse. Before
us we have the same old collective, who have decided to change their
program and ideology. It is no accident that the word "new" has come
into fashion along with the rise of politicians such as Tony Blair and
Gerhard Schroeder. In the 1960s the "new left" had a very clear system
of principles that distinguished it from the "old left", embodied in
social democracy and communism. Meanwhile, this political definition
served to make clear that the new and old left had something in common.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the situation has changed. The
idea of the new is used as a substitute for all other ideas, as a
symbolic replacement for any positive identification and as an
incantation freeing those who utter it from responsibility before the
past and future (and at times, from their consciences as well). Anything
whatever is justified on the basis of its novelty. To be new, however,
does not mean to be better. Moreover, and much more important, "new"
does not signify "final". The new becomes the old, and the old, once it
has been thoroughly forgotten, becomes the new. References to a "new"
program and "new" ideas are featured precisely when people lack the
intellectual and political courage to declare openly just what this
program and these ideas consist of (or when both program and ideas are
lacking). It is quite clear that Perry Anderson is not a supporter of
Tony Blair, as he prudently forewarns us in his preface. In Anderson's
view, Blairism differs little from neo-liberalism. Precisely for this
reason, the victory of Blair, Schroeder and similar "new social
democrats" is proof of the complete and final triumph of neo-liberalism
on a global scale.
According to Anderson, the old project of transforming the world, the
project which inspired the founders of NLR in earlier times, has been
exhausted. Not because the world has changed, but because there is
nothing that can be done about neo-liberalism and capitalism. All
attempts at bringing about fundamental change have failed. Society has
undergone a consolidation. All that remains for the left is to observe
this and to take pleasure in thinking critically about it. Consequently,
NLR as well has to renounce the old traditions and renew itself,
adapting to the circumstances that have arisen. Perry Anderson, a
sophisticated British gentleman, sits in his cosy office at no. 6 Meard
Street and limply discusses the collapse of the left project. He has
enough intellectual honesty not to repudiate his radical past or the
ideals of his youth, but he is impassive enough not to lament their
collapse. Despite Anderson's readiness to bury the left project of the
1960s, and along with it the first-series NLR, his foreword contains not
a paragraph or even a sentence devoted to political self-criticism.
Everything was fine. Both when Perry together with other young radicals
tried to revolutionise social thinking and political life in Britain,
and now, when he no longer proposes to overturn anything whatever. And
what, in reality, has happened? What particular suffering has beset
these people? Have Western intellectuals really lost anything, apart
from their principles? No-one has been thrown in prison or put in front
of a firing squad. Their homes have not been blown up, nor their cities
bombed. They are not tear-gassed on the streets, they have no problems
making ends meet, and they need not stoop to begging publishers to give
them free copies of books they cannot afford to buy. Such things are
part of the everyday experience of people not just in Eastern Europe and
the Third World, but also in the flourishing West. None of this,
however, affects the academic elite in any way. For Anderson, the
history of socialism is the history of ideas, and furthermore, of ideas
that have gone out of fashion. Gramsci has lost his attraction, and
Sartre has been forgotten. The new editor of NLR writes of this without
regret, while remaining completely unashamed of his radical past, just
as a prosperous businesswoman is not ashamed of having worn ragged jeans
during her student years. Times change, and so do fashions. As a
counterweight to utopian calls for changing society, and to hopes of
revolution, Perry offers "uncompromising realism".
What is the essence of this realism? Accepting the truth of any garbage
at all, provided it is published in the Wall Street Journal. Apart from
affirming the collapse of the left movement, the article says nothing of
substance. In essence, there is no analysis here. There are neither
reflections on the nature of modern capitalism, nor efforts to
understand the dynamic and contradictions of globalisation. The
"analysis" boils down to recapitulating mainstream editorials; the
picture of the world offered by the Wall Street Journal and the
Economist is taken for granted, without even the slightest effort at
critical reading. At best, this recalls the classic school exercise:
read through and retell in your own words. The main source of
inspiration in this case is commentators of the neo-liberal school;
Perry does not hide his admiration for them. The left, he considers, is
now incapable of proposing anything "new". "By contrast, commanding the
field of direct political constructions of the time, the Right has
provided one fluent vision of where the world is going, or has stopped,
after another - Fukuyama, Brzezinski, Huntington, Yergin, Luttwak,
Friedman. These are writers that unite a single powerful thesis with a
fluent popular style, designed not for an academic readership but a
broad international public. This confident genre, of which America has
so far a virtual monopoly, finds no equivalent on the Left" (p. 19).
It is revealing how Anderson's words repeat, almost verbatim, utterances
of Communist Party of the Russian Federation leader Gennady Zyuganov,
who has set out to establish in this way the "modernity" of his racist,
nationalist and anti-Marxist positions. But this is not what the debate
is ultimately about. One might, of course, consider that Huntington has
a better style than Anderson, though to be honest I cannot see any
difference. The essence, however, lies elsewhere. We are not talking
about who commands a bigger print run, or whose sentence structure is
more felicitous. In any case, the left has never been short of
commentators and popularisers. What is really involved is theoretical
discussion requiring a certain intellectual level, and here Fukuyama and
Huntington are completely helpless. Twenty years ago, no intellectual
considered Brzezinski a serious theoretician. Now, alongside Huntington
and the half-forgotten Fukuyama, he has become almost a spiritual mentor
for the intellectuals. The success enjoyed by these authors has nothing
to do with their merits as thinkers. This is why the phenomenon is so
interesting in sociological and culturological terms. This needs to be
thought and written about, but Anderson has no intention of doing so.
Moreover, he clearly does not intend to allow such absurd and "outmoded"
discussions into his journal. Uncompromising realism consists in the
absence of the slightest attempt at critical thinking. Marx considered
that philosophers explained the world, while the need was to change it.
Anderson considers that it is not necessary even to explain the world,
but that it is enough to describe it.
In essence, what we have before us is a very refined, gentlemanly form
of unconditional capitulation to an ideological foe. Perry breaks his
sword and surrenders himself to the mercy of the victor, but as a true
gentleman he does this with dignity and style. He does not reflect, of
course, on what the victorious enemy will then do with his "territorial
forces". The ideologue shuts himself away voluntarily in his "ivory
tower". The rest of us, remaining outside, are of no interest to him.
Such thinking is born of a total lack of contact with the real movement,
and at the same time, is used to justify the lack of such contact. The
left movement is in crisis, but precisely for this reason, radical
action and critical thought are essential as never before. There is a
need for an overarching strategy, for principled positions - in the
final analysis, for ethical foundations. In place of this, Perry
discusses in detail the rules for footnotes in the "renewed" NLR, then
goes on to inform us that from now on the journal's authors will not
necessarily be from the ranks of the left. All that remains is to change
the name to New Left-Right Review. It is obvious that a gentleman cannot
be a labour organiser or a street fighter (though curiously enough, this
was possible twenty years ago). No-one, however, is demanding that
"left" professors mix it with police on the streets. It would be quite
satisfactory if they were to busy themselves with their accepted task:
thinking critically. Admiration for rightists and calls for intellectual
union with them (to judge from everything, on the basis of their
positions) is the perfectly logical consequence of a fundamental
approach at whose heart is a refusal to critically analyse the myths of
neo-liberal capitalism.
Perry has not only managed to ignore the crisis of neo-liberalism in the
late 1990s (despite the Russian default, the Zapatista uprising in
Mexico, and in the US, the rise of a new mass left movement that
demonstrated its strength on the streets of Seattle in the autumn of
1999). He even waxes ironic over writers who have observed these
phenomena! The crisis of neo-liberalism would be far more acute were it
not for the cowardice and treachery of a significant section of the
left. The treachery has historical roots, such as the capitulation of
the Second International in 1914, but this does not change the ethical
character of what has occurred. In one of the stories of Yevgeny Shvarts
it is remarked: we have all studied in the school of evil, but who
forced you to be a star pupil? The "renewed" leftists have turned out to
be the star pupils in the school of neo-liberalism. From this it follows
that a renewal of the left is indispensable. Not in the mongrel
Blair-Schroeder-Zyuganov sense, but on the level of a decisive and
uncompromising break with such "renewers", and of a turn to the mass
movement that is assembling literally before our eyes.
The need for an alternative ideology, directed against neo-liberalism,
is extremely acute. The radicalism and protest have to acquire a
theoretical basis. It would seem to be just the time for the
intellectuals to make an impact. But alas, they have nothing to make an
impact with.... The most amusing part of Perry's editorial is its
conclusion, where he declares, with impeccable political correctness,
that he would welcome more non-Western contributions. Here, he continues
to rebuke the "old" NLR, which, in his view, failed to open its pages
sufficiently to representatives of the non-Western and non-English-
speaking world. It is enough, however, to take from one's shelves a
selection of the "old" NLR to find that the reality was quite different.
NLR published authors from Latin America, Eastern Europe, South Korea,
India and Africa. For the "new" NLR, meanwhile, serious problems in this
regard are inevitable. Why should people from the non-Western world
write for a journal that is demonstratively indifferent to the vital
questions of their existence? Why should authors who do not belong to
the inner circle of trans-Atlantic intellectuals collaborate with a
journal whose positions are alien and hostile to them? Perry laments the
intellectual narcissism of Anglo-Saxon culture, while himself
manifesting it to the fullest extent. A true gentleman, of course, is
ready to give a hearing to foreign ideas, but we foreigners are assigned
the role of a politically correct decoration, or still worse, of
"civilised natives", who are required to insert themselves into a
ready-made cultural context. It is a quite different matter that there
is absolutely no intellectual point to such an operation; why publish
foreign authors if they are no different from your own? In an old Soviet
joke, the head of the personnel department says: "If we give a job to
Rabinovich, don't expect he won't be a Jew." Here it is just the same.
If you want to publish authors from the "periphery", then don't be
surprised if they are unimpressed with the vanity and intellectual
feebleness of Western ex-radicals. The "old" NLR did not meet with
problems as a result of being published in the West, since it was
internationalist in its concept, in its view of the world. The "new" NLR
admits from the outset its character as a thoroughly provincial
publication, since such a journal is of interest to no-one apart from a
few hundred former radicals scattered around god-forsaken American
university campuses. The "old" NLR had something to teach us non-Western
leftists, since it represented everything that was best in radical
European and American culture. In this sense, the more Anglo-Saxon the
journal was, the more interesting we in other countries found it. The
"renewed" NLR, to judge from Perry's editorial, will scarcely be able to
offer us anything apart from a retelling, "in its own words", of the
articles in the Economist and the Wall Street Journal. But why do we
need a retelling, when we can have the original? Politically correct
multicultural discourse has nothing in common with a dialogue between
cultures. I have no interest in reading a British journal in order to
find out the attitude of a fashionable French critic to the modern
Chinese cinema. This does not mean that the cinema is unimportant, or
that the sociology of culture is uninteresting. The point is simply that
there are dozens of journals in English that analyse these matters
better, in more detail, more professionally, and most important, without
political-intellectual intermediaries. The "old" NLR was an
international journal of modern Marxist theory and political analysis, a
meeting-place for socialist intellectuals.
>From Perry's point of view, this project is dead. Millions of people
think differently. This, however, is not the point; one person can be
right, while millions are mistaken. The point is different: why do we
need New Left Review, when the editor himself has cheerfully and
triumphantly buried the original project? If Perry Anderson felt the
need for a new journal with a thrust different from the earlier NLR, it
would have been more honest for him simply to have shut down the former
publication and to have begun a new one. I am reluctant to think that
the main reason for keeping the title was a wish to hold onto a familiar
brand name. But in acting as he did, Anderson consciously or
unconsciously dealt a profound personal affront to large numbers of
people whose political and intellectual positions took shape under the
influence of New Left Review. By transferring the old name to a new
journal, Perry stole a part of our common past, of our shared history.
This can no longer be forgiven. It is good that the design and numbering
have been changed; here, Anderson has shown his professional honesty.
For substantial numbers of authors and readers, this will act as a
signal. A familiar, well-loved journal no longer exists. It has died, or
more precisely, its own parents have killed it. The new journal can seek
new readers for itself - among the subscribers to the Wall Street
Journal.
Louis Proyect
(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
mebe...@hotmail.com
element. The material conditions of the collapse of the new
left 'theoreticians'. In their private lives which didn't actually
entail any form of struggle at all, being on the 'left' was a career
move upwards, not downwards in society. A whole host
of 'revolutionaries' made their names in bourgeois academic
institutions. Nearly the end of their lives, they want to retire in
peace. The modern world requires an anti-NATO anti-US stance. This is
too much to ask for as this would entail going against funding of their
academic institutions, going against the virtual monopoly of propaganda
from the mass media etc. Hence the vitual bankruptcy of Anglo-Saxon new
leftism.
Although Seattle is the turning point in the opposite direction...
meberry68
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.